What Is The Opening Scene Of There Will Be Blood Plainview

The opening scene of There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 American Epic, features the attractive and physically fit protagonist, Daniel Plainview, alone and silent, hard at work down a cramped mine shaft. At this point in the narrative, Plainview is seeking wealth through the mining of precious metals. He gathers his tools in a small bucket attached to a pulley system and places a stick of dynamite into a crevice he has whittled out with a rock pick, before lighting the dynamite. Plainview then moves up the ladder with the speed of a man who has spent countless hours doing hard, manual labor. Once he reaches the top, he turns to pull his tools up the pulley system before the explosion sets off, but struggles to lift the bucket out

of the shaft using his body weight as leverage. The bucket falls down the shaft twice before the dynamite goes off, ultimately plummeting the tools to the bottom. When Plainview travels down the ladder to retrieve them and assess his haul, a rung unexpectedly breaks on the ladder, sending Plainview falling, like his tools, to the bottom of the shaft. He awakens to a broken leg, and realizes that he has discovered silver in the mine. After pulling himself and his plunder up the mine shaft, Plainview begins to drag his broken body along the rough, dessert terrain to a shop for an assessment of his wares - finding that he has made himself quite a wealthy man. This scene is poignantly silent, devoid of dialogue and accompanied only with the sounds of tools and grunts of labor; music only begins post-injury, when the camera pans across the mountainous landscape and an ambient screeching plays over Plainview's whimpers of anguish as he heaves himself back to society. Plainview later discovers he has a Midas-like proclivity for transforming natural resources, such as metals and crude oil, into wealth and power; in this way he becomes an oil tycoon. Such begins Daniel Plainview's torrid dance with power and wealth, immanence and the separation from it, self-recognition, and the struggle to retain a Nietzschian "Master" status in a series of Master/Slave relationships.
The first scene of There Will Be Blood posits quite a few correlations between George Bataille's conceptualization of animality in his work, Theory of Religion, and Plainview's solitary presence in nature. Bataille opens Theory of Religion by speaking on immanence. Immanence, as defined by the author, is an inherent experiential existence within the animalistic system. Bataille asserts that animality stems from the notion of animals consuming one another without remorse, not supposing hierarchies of domination upon the act of consumption as humans do:
Between the animal that is eaten and the one that eats, there is no relation of subordination like that connecting an object, a thing, to man… For the animal, nothing is given through time. It is insofar as we are human that the object exists where its duration is perceptible. But the animal eaten by another exists this side of duration; it is consumed, destroyed, and this is only a disappearance in a world where nothing is posited beyond the present.

Bataille goes on to postulate that at a certain point, humans differentiate themselves from animals by transcending immanence. They do this through the undertaking of subordination. The act of animals eating other animals is, following Bataille's logic, like water in water. That is to say that animals do not project objectification or subordination on their prey, or domination upon their predators. Plainview's subject-position in the first part of the opening scene of There Will Be Blood reflects Bataille's theory of animality and immanence; in that, without any previous relation to imposed hierarchies of status as observed by the audience, in the mine shaft Plainview begins his plight closest to animality, to immanence. He is alone in nature, at this point without relation to wealth or financial power. It is later, when he begins to understand the value of the work that he has done and subordinates nature and other consciousness' to himself, that he situates himself farther from immanence and his animal nature. Plainview's experience is not purely reflective of the aforementioned theoretical approach, but is representative of Bataille's hypotheses of religion and relative consciousness all the same.
Following the opening scene, Plainview develops into quite the archetypal, entrepreneurial oil magnate figure.

At the height of Plainview's career, a character named Paul Sunday approaches the tycoon regarding his family's property in Little Boston, California and the oil that resides below it. When attempting to purchase the property, Plainview is halted by Eli, Paul's twin brother. Eli, the local pastor, demands $10,000 for the property, imputing the cost to the benefit of the church. A deal is begrudgingly made, and Plainview ends up purchasing all lots surrounding the oil well except for one. This is the first time that Eli posits himself as an equivalent master, and Eli continues to antagonize Plainview throughout the film. G. W. F. Hegel writes in his work, Phenomenology of Spirit, on the notions of self-recognition, master/slave relationships, and the cyclical nature of such. Hegel proposes that to understand the world, one must understand relation - that is relation of one's own consciousness through the recognition of a consciousness of equal value to one's own. Hegel writes, "[Self-consciousness'] recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another". The author bolsters the idea of recognition by contending that rival self-consciousness' engage each other in a "fight to the death". That is, to be sure of one's own consciousness they must recognize a consciousness that is equal to their own; and then, once that recognition is done, the consciousness' must

engage in an act which subordinates one to the other. For to be recognized one must also recognize another as equivalent, but to feel exceptional one must make another feel "less than" with relation to oneself. In this way, they determine between themselves which consciousness is master, and which is slave. Plainview is not, in and of himself, a natural master. He becomes a master through his entrepreneurial efforts; however, in the meeting of Eli, Plainview recognizes another consciousness equivalent to his own. From their first meeting, the audience can deduce quite clearly that the major conflict of the film will be between these two behemoths of institutions: industry and religion.
Eli's representation within the film as a man of God, and one of power, is central to Freidrich Nietzsche's theories of moral subjugation and master/slave relationships, as depicted in the subsection of his complete works titled Beyond Good and Evil/On the Genealogy of Morality. Nietzsche postulates that "priests" are an abstract anthropomorphism of cunning, moral power juxtaposed to "warriors", which are representative for brute, violent power. Priests developed morality in order to overcome the physical and political power that Warriors had over society - evolving the concept of survival of the fittest into survival of the most moral. Priests, such as Eli, exist in a space of morality over their warrior peers which is attributed to themselves through self-denial, as an expression of ressentiment. Ressentiment assigns blame for one's shortcomings upon the success of others rather than the actions of oneself, and encourages one to exist in a space that prolongs the satisfaction of dominance to that of a moral afterlife. To reference the Judeo-Christian faith, ressentiment contributes to the idea that one who lives a self-deprived life will be rewarded with heaven, while their enemies will burn in hell. One could argue that both Plainview and Eli live lives led by ressentiment, although Eli's stance is clearer to ascertain by his position as a clergyman. Eli's antagonism of Plainview can be almost perfectly aligned with Nietzsche's opposition of priests to warriors.
In the final scene of the film, the audience witnesses the culmination of Plainview's warrior-esque life.

Plainview has achieved all that he set out to do, despite various setbacks and oppositions, landing himself a magnificent mansion, despite having mostly estranged personal relationships. Eli visits Plainview as a seemingly accomplished radio evangelist, and proposes a secondary deal which would finally allow Plainview to purchase all of the property he initially wanted in Little Boston surrounding the initial well. The coliseum for the last engagements of these rivals is Plainview's personal bowling alley. Plainview finally situationally dominates Eli, explaining to him the nature of drainage as it correlates to oil drilling. This domination is Nietzschian in nature as it only occurs because the self-depriving priest, Eli, admits that through his evangelism, he has strayed from his morals, leaving him in financial crisis. Ultimately, Plainview ends the engagement in the brutal nature of the warrior - by subjugating and beating Eli to death with a bowling

pin.
In conclusion, There Will Be Blood and the characters of Daniel Plainview and Eli Sunday intersect the philosophical ruminations of Bataille, Hegel, and Nietzsche on the bases of animality, consumption, morality, subjugation, and power. Plainview begins the film closest to his immanence through nature, recognizes his consciousness and that of his opposition through Eli, and ultimately subjugates Eli through violent, political power over morality. While this composition does not perfectly flesh out all of Bataille, Hegel, and Nietzsche's conclusions regarding morality and power, it aims to further the dialogue surrounding such suppositions. In the end, Plainview provides an example of the futility of ressentiment through the brutal beating and death of Eli and imparts one last glimpse of these social phenomena that all who reside within the bounds of human society ascribe to unknowingly.

Bibliography

There Will Be Blood. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Performed by Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano. USA: Ghoulardi Production Company, 2007. Film.

Bataille, George. Theory of Religion. Translated by Robert Hurley. NY: Zone Books, 1992.

Hegel, George W F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Complete Works of Freidrich Niezsche. Translated by Adrian Del Caro. 1st ed. Vol. 8. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014.